Aia wrote:Here's an interesting thought on this team arrangement: suppose a state currently has one team participating at the National level, and this team hopes to crack top ten in order to gain a second team for the state. Now, suppose several other teams in the same state also want to qualify for Nationals. Would rival teams try to help the state-winning team between State and Nationals in order to increase their chances of qualifying for Nationals the following year? Theoretically, this team arrangement could foster collaboration within a state. It wouldn't be too difficult for a rival team to share engineering from a gold medal device, or even share resources for academic events.

I think this type of collaboration is one of the missing points in SO because no one wants to give up their secrets but this is still a good point that I hadn't considered. Basically everyone would be rivals until after States. It would then be better to help each other to try to do everything possible to make the State represetitive team the best possible (to win the extra slots for next year).

EASTstroudsburg13 wrote:However, the problem would be that the amount of teams every year would change, which I am not sure would work so well. I tend to be one of those people who likes nice round numbers. Another small problem I foresee with this is that it puts an immense amount of pressure on the top teams to do very well so their state can get the bonus spot.

The number of teams every year can change a little anyway, depending on the facilities, funding, etc. Some years it's actually less than 60 anyway.

As for the pressure bit, there's already a tremendous amount of pressure on the front-runners to place as high as possible at Nationals- it's always been a high-pressure competition for those who think they have a chance at medaling. I don't think this method would put any considerably greater amount of pressure on anyone.

Just an idea- this year, the 1st place team was way ahead, but 2-11 were very close, and then 12+ was all further behind. I haven't verified this with other years' score sheets, but I think it's not uncommon for it to be unevenly spread like that. I don't know if this would work, but it might make sense to choose how many teams get one added for the next year based on these point groupings... as in, if this were hypothetically implemented this coming year, the states of 1-11 would get another team, because they were clearly ahead of the next few teams based on overall scores. If one year, say, the top 9 were really close, and then there was a big gap before the 10th, then 1-9 would get an extra. If it was more than 12 before you saw a serious gap like that, then only the top 12 would get it, I guess. A "big gap" would have to be specifically defined... I don't know, more than 30 points? 40 points? Something like that, I'm not sure what would work the best.

East Stroudsburg South and J.T.L Cavs Alumnus49ersfanMetsfanYou are now free to lose the game.Ursinus Bearcox 2020Need a rugger? Look no further.Disk is lif.Physics and Astronomy major; Bio, Math minors Nu Delta Omicron founder.

scienceolympiadist wrote:i don't think so. i just know that 2-11 were pretty close. below that, i dont usually pay attention to their scores

I wouldn't say that, at least not for C (I assume you, as someone in C, are talking about C). I mean really the top 4 were pretty clearly defined, with over 90 points between 4th and 5th. In the top 4, all teams beat the team behind them by a reasonable margin, the largest being Centerville over Grand Haven, though not by far. If you had to divide the C division teams into tiers by results, I would say it would probably be 1-4, 5-9, and 10-18 would be the first 3 tiers if you wanted to divide it up like that.